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Ice in cooling tower

The customer popped open the hatch because his overflow had water coming out of it and saw a gigantic sheet of ice on the wall of the tower. Now he is scared it is going to come off and wreck the sump. The tower goes to a heat exchanger for winter chiller replacement.
I checked the system out and it seems ok. The fans are running to cool the water to 45-50 degrees for the exchanger and there is a HW fill if it gets to 40. Tower is 3 years old. He may have had it do this before but never opened the hatch to see it. Opinions?

Had it happen on a older BAC we had. Building shut down for the night, but Megamess, I mean Metasys didnt shut the spray pumps down. Basen heaters didnt keep up and OOO boy what a mess. At least you could get the door open on yours. Took us about 1hr . Tower was ruined. Looked like the ice cave on Hoth, that Luke was stuck in. Empire Strikes Back. So if you got ice in it, then something is not running that should be or shouldnt be.
Redfive

We have tower icing problems in the winter because we cool all year long using chillers, heat exchangers, or outside air.

We are going to try some Marley VFD's that measure the outgoing water temp. If the temp gets too low the VFD will reverse the fans to keep the warmer water/air in the tower longer to melt the ice and bring the water temperature back up. Looks good on paper.

We have tower icing problems in the winter because we cool all year long using chillers, heat exchangers, or outside air.

We are going to try some Marley VFD's that measure the outgoing water temp. If the temp gets too low the VFD will reverse the fans to keep the warmer water/air in the tower longer to melt the ice and bring the water temperature back up. Looks good on paper.

We did something similar to this. Whenever the outside air temp dropped below 40F, the cooling tower fans would reverse for 10 minutes every half hour. Worked very well, but only if you have basin heaters.

resticter dish the diameter of the discharge air of that tower will restrict the air and keep the ice from building up within..the fan will run longer to make the setpoint of the troth water,but that heated air stacked up withn will keep it free of ice cut a piece of sheet metal the diameter of the opening if it is a blow thru then mount it about 16" out from the wired cicular cover looking into the fan blade with kindorff or strip lenghts of metal...12/3/6/9 positions

We have tower icing problems in the winter because we cool all year long using chillers, heat exchangers, or outside air.

We are going to try some Marley VFD's that measure the outgoing water temp. If the temp gets too low the VFD will reverse the fans to keep the warmer water/air in the tower longer to melt the ice and bring the water temperature back up. Looks good on paper.

Interesting plan, would like to hear about the results and maybe even see this paper ;-)

Is this a BAC open forced draft cooling tower?
It sounds like you are using the system in free cooling using heat exchanger with the chiller off? Is that correct?
If there is water going over the tower the pan heaters will have very little effect. The pan heaters are there only to keep the basin water from freezing when the tower is off.
What sort of fan control do you have? Possibly the fan is running at too high of a speed when the load has dropped off. Vfd that runs based on the leaving temperature from the tower is the best option.